Metta World Peace has teamed up with broadcaster Ros Gold-Onwude to tackle the stigmas around athletic mental health.
MANHATTAN—Life after basketball has taken Metta World Peace plenty of places. While he's happy to keep traversing his hometown of New York City, he has officially removed himself from on metropolitan posting, that of New York Knicks head coach.
"Now? No," the artist formerly known as Ron Artest told BIL with a laugh as the Knicks made their epic title run in this late spring, have previously made a public campaign for the position now occupied by Mike Brown. "Wherever I coach, I want to put on my own staff and that's just not the case in many places. They want to place your staff. I'm not letting nobody place my staff because I'm coming to dominate. As I'm coming to dominate, I'm going to need to pick my own style, because I already know how I want to play defense. I already know how I want to play offense."
"If I get a school or professional job where I get a chance to bring up my staff, that's the one I want to take, so we can win some championships," World Peace continued. "It's hard for me to go somewhere [like that] ... I'm not going to have a preset staff."
World Peace's New Battle
Having worked with a de facto holy trinity of New York basketball—Manhattan's La Salle Academy, St. John's University of his native Queens, and a year on the floor with the Knicks—World Peace is now one of the latest taking down the stigmas athletes face when addressing mental health issues.
In between appearances among fellow Knick alumni during the championship chase at Madison Square Garden, World Peace joined tenured basketball broadcaster Ros Gold-Onwude to discuss his own mental health journey at Fountain House, a long-standing nonprofit "fighting to improve health, increase opportunity, and end social and economic isolation for people living with serious mental illness."
"I've seen mental health and mental illness really our entire family up. It has caused homelessness in our family, it has caused being in and out of psych wards, it's caused distress, confusion, chaos," Gold-Onwude told BIL. "It's been something that we've been fighting for our lives against for years. Now we're on the other side of that in many ways, with good therapy, good medicine, good support systems, great villages sharing the wealth and family and other people tapping in. We've been able to elevate.
Such stigmas were already guaranteed to face a tough challenge in World Peace, the NBA's 2004 Defensive Player of the Year and the deliverer of the dagger shot that turned the 2010 Los Angeles Lakers into champions. He would speak extensively with Gold-Onwude about the rising awareness and prioritization of the concept as part of the "Sharing the WELLth" community talk series that has hosted several figures from the athletic world, such as fitness expert Kirsten Ferguson, who also carries extensive NFL experience.
"I think is the first guest who can really speak from either personal or family experience of really understanding this world of severe mental illness," Gold-Onwude, who sits on the Fountain House board of directors, said of adding World Peace to her series. "All of our other guests have talked about their mental health, but Mehta's story is unique because he can talk about, you know, under the bright lights. He's famously had to, you know, see and use his psychiatrist, his psychologist therapy. He has family who said has been medicated. He knows the knows what's happening here at Fountain House."
There's taking things personally and then there's what Gold-Onwude and World Peace have invested in Fountain House: Gold-Onwude's sister Annie has frequently worked with the organization's educational programs while World Peace grew up in Queens hearing his Uncle Morris praise the organization's efforts.
Tragically, World Peace spoke at the Fountain House shortly after Morris passed away. He nonetheless lit up when recalling his time under his tutelage partly brought about under his watch, fondly recalling events like Morris gushing about Fountain House's work and taking him to capoeira martial arts class as a youth.
"This could not have been a better time in my life," World Peace told BIL. "Typically I would be crying, but it's such a powerful moment. It's like, okay, this is something here, something's happening. I want to be a champion of Fountain House ... We've got to take the initiative. I'm really happy that people are recognizing the effort instead of looking at a basketball pass. We're trying to help humans. So, I'm really happy that people, organizations like the Fountain House, people like in the state of Los Angeles, that are recognizing us and making a difference."
Sharing and Daring
With basketball fever gripping the city, World Peace's Fountain House arrival perhaps couldn't be better timed. His audience alongside Gold-Onwude (seen in full above) was packed to the brim with fans clad in blue-and-orange Knick gear, many of whom were no doubt aware that the Knicks hosted the penultimate stop of an 17-year NBA career.
While the Knicks' long-sought championship realization eventually came weeks after Gold-Onwude and World Peace's showcase, the latter was more than willing to harken back to his own moment of championship glory. He was a major part of the Lakers' 2010 title tally, which saw them avenge the loss to the Boston Celtics two years prior. On a night where MVP Kobe Bryant struggled from the field, World Peace sank a last-minute three-pointer that turned momentum permanently purple.
World Peace notably made further headlines for his reaction in the aftermath, where he thanked his therapist in his postgame interview with Doris Burke. Perhaps defining the mental theme perfectly, World Peace explained exactly why such an acknowledgement was so vital in the stifling of stigmas. He noted to BIL that while the mention was seen as relatively revolutionary at the time, most, if not all, major professional and amateur clubs now carry a mental health professional/professionals on staff.
World Peace revealed to Gold-Onwude that name-dropping psychiatrist Dr. Santhi Periasamy allowed him to earn a little bit of revenge for the narratives that followed his career.
Three years before his Larry O'Brien Trophy hoist, World Peace explained, he tried to secure funding and air time for a therapeutic roundtable involving treatment-seeking teens but was spurned in favor of reality television invites where he could "get drunk and talk smack."
"I was getting support behind that, they'll put private money up, but I wasn't getting support for social impact content," World Peace recalled. "I was doing a whole lot in the mental health space in Los Angeles that whole season, but I didn't know it was going to have that big of an impact ... Over the years and years and years, I didn't think it was going to have that big of an impact."
World Peace also addressed his role in the infamous "Malice at the Palace," the November 2004 incident which saw his season wiped out when he ventured into The Palace in Auburn Hills' seating area to go after a fan that he believed threw a beverage at him following a testy encounter with Detroit Pistons All-Star Ben Wallace. It triggered a de facto riot that involved sportsman and spectator alike and led to what became an 86-game suspension, one of the longest in Association history.
In his conversation with Gold-Onwude, who currently serves World Peace was able to look back on the incident with relative humor with over two decades of hindsight to work with.
"Ideally, I would just curse them out, why would you throw a cup of beer at me, and you can figure out the rest of the words," World Peace said. "It definitely taught me about control. Any point in time, no matter what, it destroyed my year. From a career perspective, it wasn't the best situation. But I don't know how I would have done that differently. You know, I wish I wish I could have done it differently. But, at that age, I don't know how I would've done it differently."
Having mostly pushed the Detroit dramatics to the backburner, World Peace continues to stand as one of the faces of turn-of-the-century basketball. In addition to his title work, he also carries All-American, All-Defensive Team and All-Star honors on his name, which also averaged 13.2 points and 4.5 rebounds in 991 official appearances. He is currently engaged in his work in his eponymous Artest Education Foundation, which helps situate student-athletes for life after the court, complete, of course, with mental health resources.
Geoff Magliocchetti is on X @GeoffJMags
